Briciola blends Brazil and Italy in Silver Lake

Briciola, a new Brazilian-Italian restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, opened in mid-September in Silver Lake's former Spoon & Pork space.

The name means "crumb" in Italian, a nod to the dining room's small size. It's the second project from chefs Mattia Raimond and Matteo Di Nicola, who closed their Michelin-recommended Cedro in Newbury Park in late 2025 to relocate to Los Angeles together.

Raimond was born in Belo Horizonte to a Brazilian mother and an Italian father who ran a restaurant in Brazil; he was raised in northern Italy, trained as a sommelier and worked in French kitchens before crossing back over. Di Nicola, born in Rome to a family of restaurateurs, trained as a chef and staged in kitchens across the country. "I've always wanted to create this concept," Raimond says. "Italian-Brazilian fusion."

Prosciutto meets papaya, and cachaça stands in for vodka in the pink sauce.

Pasta with a Brazilian accent

The menu reads mostly Italian, with most dishes carrying a Brazilian twist or tracing the history of Italian immigrants in Brazil: prosciutto crudo paired with sweet papaya, polenta frita, and golden bolinho de bacalhau stuffed with cod and potato. "There's no Brazil without bolinho de bacalhau," Raimond says.

Cavatappi arrives topped with crunchy linguiça calabresa in a pink sauce that swaps vodka for cachaça, while spaghetti alla nerano uses queijo Minas, a soft Brazilian cheese, instead of provolone. Grilled branzino comes in a coconut-and-bell-pepper sauce inspired by moqueca, the Brazilian seafood stew, and desserts lean on guava paste and salty pecorino.

Beyond the churrascaria

Raimond and Di Nicola wanted to move past the churrascaria format that dominates Brazilian dining in Los Angeles and spotlight more regional flavours instead, pairing the kitchen with a wine list built almost entirely on natural bottles from Austria, Germany and beyond. It lands the same season as other Italian-leaning reopenings around Los Angeles.

Whether Silver Lake takes to queijo Minas standing in for provolone as readily as it has to the neighbourhood's usual Italian imports is the question Briciola's small room will spend the winter answering.